How does one not get overwhelmed by their projects?

[Vidknight]

(Not sure if this is the best spot for this topic as I was originally going to put this in webcrafting, only to find out while typing this that this also affects other areas .)

This is something that I personally struggle with, and I honestly don't really know why (Not sure if it's because of my ADHD, or not, most likely is). For some reason I find myself getting overwhelmed, by the amount of things I want to do on my site. There are so many things I want to add, to it on top of other things outside of it, like practicing, and doing more animation, or practice creating 3d Models.

The even weirder thing is that I do know that this mindset is not healthy in the slightest, and I also know that my personal projects have no deadline at all, and that I'm free to work on them any time I want, and finish it at any time I want. It likes the conscious part of my brain knows all of this, but my subconscious doesn't which just leads to me getting overwhelmed.

The most frustrating part is that this overthinking about what to do, or work on, or finish. Ends up with me barely starting, or finishing anything, and the time I do work on something, my brain just start thinking "I should do X instead", which leads to me not focusing on this one project. I'm not exactly sure what to do here 

[Monoki]

Man do I feel this one. I’ve got a million works in progress and so far, the only thing’s I’ve finished are a bunch of smaller ones like pieces of music, drawings, or so.

There are too many projects I have where I’ve more or less abandoned them or dropped them for a long time to try picking up years later because the new, shiny ideas call and beckon to me. Trying to work through some level of consistency so I can actually…complete something.

[nobo]

Since I got into gamedev, I've learned a lot about getting overwhelmed by projects.

You want to pick something small that does one thing. Thinking about all the other stuff you want to do is preventing you from doing anything. Game developers call it narrowing scope. If your scope is large, it's going to sink your project. You also usually find yourself about half way through the project and realize you'll never be able to do all the things you originally wanted to, so you have to narrow scope again in order to get something finished. You can't spend all your time working on random things that don't come together. It applies to other things as well.

Over time after doing small things, you build a habit of getting things done. That's all finishing projects is: a habit. You want to build the habit making extremely simple things. The important part isn't having something big and impressive at the end; it's having something to present that you say, "Well I did this."

As you do more small things, it becomes easier to put those small things together. You have an arsenal of small things. Before you know it, there's big things coming.

This is one of the reasons I'm grateful I got into webdev before games. It was all part of the practice of, "making small things first."

[ancientangel333]

this is something i struggle with sooooo much! even outside of web development and coding. i have so many stories, OCs, and other projects i've been working on for literal years, and it's the kind of overwhelming where just the THOUGHT of all you need to do exhausts you. i feel like i already did the thing just from thinking about it!

for web development though, it does feel different. it feels like i can just slowly work on it and not have to worry about it being perfect on the first shot. i think i just need to apply this same thought process to my art and writing...

[BlazingCobaltX]

I've learned from some post years ago that part of working on a project is the process itself. Even if something is eventually left unfinished, if you had fun while working on it that counts for something too. Once I internalised this, I got less concerned with finishing everything I work on. I let my inspiration to work on XYZ project more naturally and do not feel pressure to finish anything within a specific time window or with certain quality standards.

This is of course easier for some projects than others. My writing projects have an almost impossible scale and I've given up on the idea of ever finishing them. Meanwhile, working on a website feels very easy and accessible, as if it somehow takes less effort to make things seem 'done' for the outside, which is enough to me. As with music, I know not being able to finish songs is a skill issue. Now that I've taken steps to improve myself I see differences in my knowledge. The reason for not finishing a project could be any of those things: Scale, self-imposed standards, or skill issue.

[Kie]

The only thing that works for me is to make lots and lots of lists. I personally keep a list of projects I want to start some day, a list of active projects (which I limit to only a couple at a time), and a list of things to do for each project.
So I have a to-do list for my site, and I try to cross out the stuff on it one by one. The stuff on the list ranges from major stuff like new pages, to little things like correcting typos or joining a webring I've been keeping an eye on. When I feel particularly scatterbrained I just force myself to start working on the first thing on the to-do list and make my way down in order. It helps me a lot because sometimes I get overwhelmed by having to decide which task to start.
Having that sort of structure is a real lifesaver for me, but everyone is different, and I'm sure some people woulfd feel overwhelmed just by the amount of lists I keep haha

[Julie]

Neurodivergent myself (ASD), and I honestly resonate with a lot of what the original poster has said. For the most part, I try to keep to myself most of the time but that's a far cry from how I was years ago. I would've been very restrictive in who I allow to interact and got a bit too much of a people pleaser... I had noticed that a lot of the time, I block folks I know that would not get along with me at all or I know I have strife with based on what's in their post feed on socials. I used to be very against the idea of using the block feature unless it came to that, but now I tend to use it as a boundary enforcement tool.

Even now though, I do feel a bit of anxiety and lack of belonging when it comes to trying to be active in places. I have at least one or two discord servers I've been a member of and debated on leaving because I lack the sense of belonging and I just feel more comfortable with being solo even to this day. As I recently got back into web development (despite having a half built site up on Neocities), I still feel that regardless of being okay alone - it gets tiresome. But I've been so used to being by myself, it's hard to communicate with others to the point of where I freeze up trying to come up with words to describe my own solitude that's soften me to interacting with others...

The anxiety on top of the autism is enough to really get me questioning a lot of myself, even though I have been slowly learning what makes me tick and what doesn't. Even now, I still avoid things because of that fear of I'm not going to belong regardless of how much effort I put in. That kind of also plays into not going out of the way to communicate with others unless it's a response to someone else's or I just post an entry like this one here.